Most internet users are aware of the 2 types of IP addresses in use today. One is Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) and the other is Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6). The introduction of IPv6 is due to the limited addressing provided by IPv4.

Example of an IPv4 IP address: 191.239.213.197
Example of an IPv6 IP address: 2404:6800:4003:c02::64

IPv6 has a special range designed to represent an IPv4 IP address but in a form similar to IPv6. This range is known as the IPv4-mapped IPv6 address.

Let’s revisit the earlier IPv4 IP address below and also show you its equivalent form in IPv4-mapped IPv6 address.

IPv4 IP address: 191.239.213.197
IPv4-mapped IPv6 address: ::ffff:191.239.213.197

All you have to do is add ::ffff: in front of your IPv4 address.

Since the IP2Location IPv6 CSV files contain IPv4-mapped IPv6 addresses, you will need to learn how to calculate the IP number in order to query IPv4 IP addresses using the IPv6 CSV files.

To calculate a normal IPv4 IP address (e.g. 191.239.213.197) to IP number, you will do the following:

(191 * 256 * 256 * 256) + (239 * 256 * 256) + (213 * 256) + 197 = 3220166085

To get the IP number for the IPv4-mapped IPv6 address, you just take the above total and add 281470681743360.

3220166085 + 281470681743360 = 281473901909445

So when you are querying an IPv4 IP address using the IPv6 CSV files, just follow the above calculations to get the IP number.